Recent research on annotation interfaces provides provocative evidence that anchored, annotation-based discussion environments may lead to better conversations about a text. However, annotation interfaces raise complicated tradeoffs regarding screen real estate and positioning. It is argued that solving this screen real estate problem requires…

This paper describes an ongoing experiment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne regarding the use of World Wide Web-based document annotations for educational purposes. An annotation tool called Medium was built, merging database and Web technologies, to be used as a companion for classical university courses and collaborative…

The nature of collaborative learning involves intensive interactions among collaborators, such as articulating knowledge into written, verbal or symbolic forms, authoring articles or posting messages to this community's discussion forum, responding or adding comments to messages or articles posted by others, etc. Knowledge collaborators'…